Following on the heels of the highly-successful and Facebook-friendly ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, this is The Railfan Five Challenge. The goal of this challenge is to share your railfanning story in the form of five photos that you select. The five photos:
- are photographs that you took, or that others took with you, or of you.
- depict trains, tracks, a model railway or trackside views.
- inspired your love of trains, or illustrate the impact trains have had on your life.
- do not have to be perfect!
- can include captions - what makes the photo meaningful to you?
How do you take up the challenge? Post your five photos - on your blog, Facebook or wherever you share photos online. After posting the photos, challenge two others to do the same, within the next five days. Nominees who choose not to take up the challenge are encouraged to make a donation to a railway preservation project of their choice - local, regional or national.
An example - in the above photo, my son is at Paris Junction, ON watching eastbound intermodal traffic roll. Taken in the the spring of 1993, this was during a great trip to southwestern Ontario - while the ladies were visiting the Mary Maxim arts and crafts factory store, we headed over to the nearby CN mainline on a beautiful, sunny morning and were treated to a fast-rolling train that held his interest and mine. It's a runner-up for my Railfan Five Challenge photo selections.
Interestingly, my Railfan Five Challenge photos include trains as well as people. Trains and people illustrate my railfan journey, and the value of sharing experiences with others. And they tell a story. These five photos stop me in my tracks. I'll be posting them in the next five days! Would you consider doing the same? --Eric
Great idea, Eric! I'm in :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for your enthusiasm, Steve! You stand a very, very good chance of being in the first wave.
ReplyDeleteI hope you will find it a fun project as I did. The key to me was discipline...Brian in Winnipeg said that for him "more like a Railfan 500 Challenge". We get so many photos stored away that it's very challenging to pick out the very few that really tell our story trackside. Not to say that there could not be several groups of 5 in several challenges, telling sub-plots of our story!
Stay tuned for what promises to be an interesting view at what makes some well-known Canadian railfans tick!
Eric
That's a fantastic idea! I love it! I did my own, and maybe you'd like to see it.
ReplyDeletehttp://cprail43railfanning.blogspot.ca/2014/10/my-railfan-5-challenge-5-photos-showing.html?m=1
Have a great day!
Great job, Braedan! Thanks for spreading the challenge to Youtube - hopefully it will catch on there. Ben Alain of BArailsystem has also posted a video My Railfan Five.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment,
Eric